In this unique lecture-recital, Professor Paul Robertson, leader of the world-renowned Medici String Quartet, offers his perspective on the inner workings and emotional dynamics of ensemble playing.

Paul shares his experiences of the pressures, the struggles, the spiritual costs and rewards of a music ensemble. In conversation with Tia Kuchmy, Jungian analyst and musician, Paul answers questions that continue to intrigue and fascinate about how a string quartet comes into being, rehearses and forges its joint interpretative decisions. He describes the striving and intense emotional ambivalence the players experience within the music, and occasionally between themselves.

In what will almost certainly be their very last appearance together, the current members of the Medici String Quartet perform Beethoven’s Cavatina as a tribute to their and their previous colleagues’ musical life as an ensemble.